interactiveAmy.com » social media musings

We Are The World, Use Social Media To Make It A Better Place!

Amy — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:00:08 +0000

I have been campaigning for a revival of “We Are The World” for ages.

Besides having a star studded line up and a catchy chorus, the “We Are The World” charity single shows the power of people uniting for change. Social media allows to our voices to reach a worldwide audience, today the power of one can be amplified to around the world in a matter of seconds.

Originally written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, and performed by a super group of over 45 artists, the charity single was intended to raise funds for famine-relief in Ethiopia. “We Are The World” reemerged as the final performance of Michael Jackson’s public memorial service, when several of the entertainers gathered on stage to sing “We Are The World.” Of course I would have loved for the song to come back over better circumstances, but it got me thinking about the message, and how the Internet and social networking has made the world a much more connected place.

Excerpt from We Are The World”

“There comes a time
When we head a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
And it’s time to lend a hand to life
The greatest gift of all

We can’t go on
Pretending day by day
That someone, somewhere will soon make a change
We are all a part of
God’s great big family
And the truth, you know love is all we need

[Chorus]
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let’s start giving
There’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own lives
It’s true we’ll make a better day
Just you and me”

Social media enables us to be connected and interconnected with hundreds of millions of people at any given moment. In addition to staying in touch with old friends and connecting with new ones, social websites are also used to express opinions, change established rules and break down barriers. Social movements can be launched from a laptop, and our voices can sing out to the world! It’s our turn to make the world better!

Hugs Make the World go ‘Round!

One of my favorite examples of people using the social web to unite the world is Inspire Me Today Founder Gail Lynne Goodwin and her husband Darryl, who are literally wrapping the world in hugs! The Global Hug Tour will stop in 45 locations over a period of 5 months, giving at least 2,000 hugs in each location. In addition to hugs, they will also be delivering an estimated $1,000,000 to important causes throughout the tour. You can become a Hug Ambassador for a $10 contribution, which allows you to sponsor the delivery of a hug, and you can choose the city and cause where your donation will make a difference.

Start a Dance Revolution!

In addition to hugs, song and dance are also understood universally. A guy named Matt inspired us to think about how we are all connected through YouTube and a goofy dance. Produced over 14 months, in 42 countries and with a cast of thousands, “Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)” video has been viewed over 22 million times on YouTube!

Thirst for Change!

On 12 February 2009 202 cities around the world held Twestivals, bringing together the Twitter community for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water. Twestival leveraged the Twitter audience to raise more than $250,000 in the most ambitious Twitter fundraising event to date! $250,000 funded 55 water projects in Ethiopia, Uganda and India providing clean water for just over 17,000 people.

For many, social media has changed our lives in some meaningful way. Collectively it is changing the world for good.

There are so many fantastic examples of how the World Wide Web has helped bridge cultures and connect people. Please share some of your favorite examples of how social networks have enabled you or others to connect to people all over the world.

Now, imagine what will happen when the whole world gets connected…!

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Windy City Social Marketing Summit Recap

Amy — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:23:00 +0000

I have so much to say about this great conference, so I will be breaking up into multiple posts to share some great takeaways and examples of attractive interactive campaigns!

The Marketing Masters summit was held at Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel, and it was a packed house – over 200 professionals interested in learning how to tap into social media to generate awareness for their businesses.

The line up included:

Get Stirred Up’s David Roth and Rick Bacher on creating branded consumer experiences that generate marketing buzz, lessons from Cereality and their agency work

E-mail Makeovers – Reagan Taylor, NCR eCommerce Consultant discussing how to develop emails that increase response and customer engagement

Brad Keown from Facebook showed how to use Facebook fan pages to promote your business

Avery Cohen, Metrist Partners – Top 10 Tips for Improving Your Natural Search Rankings

And then the panel – How Great Companies use Facebook and Twitter to promote their business
Moderator: Liz Strauss
Panelists: Ginny Morrison, Lane Hospitality; Charlie Festa, Threadless & Kelly Olexa, Ford Fiesta “Agent”

My personal highlight from the event included the Cereality presentation, it was food for thought in ways than one! I also loved Ginny Morrison’s High Peaks Resort Success story and I will be sharing details in my next post!

Stay tuned for highlights from Windy City Social’s Marketing summit!

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BOSSdev – Social Media Strategy Seminar

Amy — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:52:17 +0000

On Thursday I went to the BOSSdev Social Media Marketing lunch at the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago. The subject was “Social Media Strategy: Achieving Real Results in a Digital World.” One of my favorite parts was the location, do you think BOSSdev knew that you had to walk right through the Internet exhibit to get to the luncheon? Bonus points for that!

Speakers included:

Korye Logan, Digital Marketing Strategist, BOSSdev – “Why Social Matters to your Business”
Cosmin Ghiurau, Social Media Analyst, BOSSdev – “Social Media Landscape”
Amber Naslund, Radian6, Director of Community – “Listen & Learn: New Media, New Metrics, New Lessons”
Mike Strauss, VP Interactive, Marcus Thomas – “Troy-Bilt: An Integrated Marketing Case Study”
Christian Caldwell, Usability Specialist, American Heart Association – “CPR Week Case Study”

Social is NOT the solution, it is part of the solution.

Interesting facts learned:

According to Nielsen, “member communities” have overtaken personal email to become the worlds 4th most popular online sector after search, portals, and PC software applications.
There are over 7 million blogs about gardening and outdoor power equipment.
In the month of June 2009, 305,628 people have taken a CPR class!

Highlight of the day for me was Amber Naslund’s presentation on the Top Ten Social Media Conversations To Listen For:

#10) The Complaint – Be on top of complaints NOW!

#9) The Complement – People are saying nice things, you should responds to compliments to engender goodwill!

#8) The Problem – Listen and pay attention, people will tell you what is wrong

#7) The Question or Inquiry – Watch to see how other community members answer questions for you – friends, community members and fans will answer questions for you! Great opportunity to jump in and answer!

#6) The Campaign Impact – How are people are responding to campaign overall? This will help tracking across social web and ties to offline efforts.

#5) The Crisis – Online good news travels fast, but bad news travels faster!

#4) The Competitor – Pay attention to what they are doing and what their customers say. Opportunity for you!

#3) The Crowd – Listen to the wisdom of the crowd, what is interesting and moving them?

#2) The Influencer – Influence has nothing to do with number of twitter followers, do you have TRUST? Community can be large or small, but you need to know who the influencers are in your community.

#1) The Point of Need – People who are not in touch with your brand but ready to buy!

Have you noticed other types of social media conversatiosn taking place? Give ‘em an obvious name and tell us about some of your favorites.

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Becoming an Internet Celebrity – Erin Blaskie at WordCamp Chicago

Amy — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:24:09 +0000

Andy Warhol said that everyone will have his or her 15 minutes of fame. But what if you want more than 15 minutes?

How can YOU become an Internet celebrity?

At WordCamp Chicago Erin Blaskie gave a standout presentation entitled “Becoming an Internet Celebrity using WordPress and Social Media.” Anyone looking to break into the spotlight, pay attention!

Who is Erin Blaskie, and what makes her an Internet celebrity? Erin is an Internet Marketing Strategist from Ontario, Canada, or as she describes herself, “A Girl Involved in a Passionate Love Affair with Internet Marketing.” In order to demonstrate how to gain exposure and maintain relevancy within a target market; Erin created an alter ego and became her own real life case study – Bonus: an Internet Celebrity was born!

Meet Erin Games.

Erin Games did not exist before February 2009. Erin Games 1.0 was created using Brian Gardner’s Church theme on WordPress, social media channels including YouTube and Twitter, and a World of Warcraft membership. Within four months, the Erin Games YouTube channel had over 9,000 views and 500 subscribers, and was listed on the second page of YouTube’s Gaming Channel. Erin Games gained over 2,000 followers on Twitter, and the website now ranks at 279,000 of US sites according to Alexa. On top of that, Erin was asked to cover ComicCon and BlizzCon, she is the gaming/MMO correspondent for TheStream.tv, and was offered a clothing line sponsorship with Jinx.com!

How can you apply a similar strategy to become an Internet celebrity in your area of interest?

Internet celebrity is interchangeable with industry expert, leader, guru, go-to person. Simply stated, it’s all about the know, like and trust factor. – Michael Port

To begin your path to stardom:

Chose a specific target market where you have knowledge and passion
Share your personality!
Target specific people in the industry and on the web who will drive the brand forward, partner with larger sites for increased exposure
Gather a following for your blog as opposed to capturing a one-time audience
Create buzz and appeal for your markets, which increases sales, visibility and market appeal

Remember – It is important to maintain relevance to YOUR target market, not the entire world.

Authenticity sells, so be yourself!

People will seek you out when you give them reason to, don’t try to fit into a mold.

When you are blogging, do so in your own voice, so people get to learn about YOU and not just your company or chosen topic.

Tools to get you started:

Video – if you are comfortable with it, get on YouTube and do videos about your content area
Blog different mediums, video, blog posts, excerpts from other bloggers, give people a lot of things to interact with.
Interweave your efforts – when you blog tweet about it, turn blog post into articles, turn videos into blog posts.
Live streaming video sessions – invite people to come and ask you questions
Guest bloggers – invite industry leaders to blog on your site
Interaction & interactivity – get community involved through contests, etc (freebies help sell stuff)
Get out of your bubble – look at industry and outside of your industry to see what’s hot now
Attend specific events: going to networking events & conferences

Remember – Reach out as much as your expect to be reached to…this is a two- way street!

Erin has it going on, and is therefore an Internet Celebrity in my eyes (even though I am not a gamer!) You should get to know Erin too, and can by visiting her sites:
www.bsetc.ca
www.thevacoach.com
www.learnaboutonlinebusiness.com

In case I haven’t encountered your favorite Internet Celebrity yet, please turn me on to some of your favorites!

Don’t forget – It is OK to talk about what you do, who you are and why you’re the Rockstar in your industry.

If you are an aspiring Internet Celebrity plug yourself below!

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What I Learned at WordCamp Chicago

Amy — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:25:28 +0000

Is it possible for a weekend at WordCamp to turn someone into a blogger?

Yes, I am living proof!

This past weekend, I attended WordCamp Chicago to immerse myself in the world of WordPress. While not an entry level blog conference, this blogging newbie was on a mission to learn from the best.

I will follow up with more WordCamp Chicago highlights and presentation recaps in posts to come, but in the meantime here are some takeaways that inspired me to log into WordPress and create an account before heading home after my first day at WordCamp Chicago.

Liz Strauss, founder of SOBCon and blogger extraordinaire kicked off WordCamp Chicago with a lesson on how to make your blog stand out. With over 100 million blogs out there, any and all tips will certainly help!

If you’re still thinking about what you’re going to blog about – choose something that you love! Blogging about your passion will attract like-minded people, and you will also look really smart!

People can find information anywhere, blog your experience with your information.

For example – if movie critics only blogged information, all of the movie reviews would be the same.

(And speaking of movies, if you are a movie buff with a small bladder, check out RunPee.com, it tells you the best time to run to the restroom mid-movie, just heard about that site and had to share!!)

So now that you have something to write about, how does one build online influence?

According to Micah Baldwin, founder of #FollowFriday, if you truly want to be influential online, just influence one person. He even provided a formula to back that up:

Influence = Reach [Brand*Expertise*Trust], where reach is a multiplier of influence.

If I lost you at #FollowFriday, here is the run down – each Friday on Twitter, users recommend interesting and exciting people to follow, and people follow them back. Talk about extending your influence, a recommendation from someone you trust goes a long way!

WordPress can do just about anything…So where does one begin?

A great way to learn is by example, and seeing how other people have used the platform is a great place to start! Luckily, Doug Hanna’s session was about “Showcasing the WordPress Showcase.”

In order to be included in the WordPress Showcase:
-   you have to use WordPress in a unique and innovative way,
-   have thousands of regular readers,
-   be written by someone famous, or notable in his/her particular field,
-   or represent notable organization, government entity, corporation as an official blog or website.

If WordPress is good enough for Martha Stewart, Sir Richard Branson, Harvard Law School and I Can Haz Cheezburger, it is good enough for me! Check out the showcase, what are your favorite WordPress sites?

You didnt have to attend WordCamp to have great advice to share – so tell me, what are your tips for new bloggers? Please share some pearls of wisdom, resources or words of inspiration for those who are just joining the world of WordPress.

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